Jeff Lunden
Jeff Lunden is a freelance arts reporter and producer whose stories have been heard on NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition, as well as on other public radio programs.
Lunden contributed several segments to the Peabody Award-winning series The NPR 100, and was producer of the NPR Music series Discoveries at Walt Disney Concert Hall, hosted by Renee Montagne. He has produced more than a dozen documentaries on musical theater and Tin Pan Alley for NPR — most recently A Place for Us: Fifty Years of West Side Story.
Other documentaries have profiled George and Ira Gershwin, Stephen Sondheim, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart, Harold Arlen and Jule Styne. Lunden has won several awards, including the Gold Medal from the New York Festival International Radio Broadcasting Awards and a CPB Award.
Lunden is also a theater composer. He wrote the score for the musical adaptation of Arthur Kopit's Wings (book and lyrics by Arthur Perlman), which won the 1994 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical. Other works include Another Midsummer Night, Once on a Summer's Day and adaptations of The Little Prince and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for Theatreworks/USA.
Lunden is currently working with Perlman on an adaptation of Swift as Desire, a novel of magic realism from Like Water for Chocolate author Laura Esquivel. He lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.
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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says Broadway can open on May 19. But opening a show takes time.
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Last spring, student performers had their hopes of stardom dashed as schools abruptly closed at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. A year later, we follow two schools putting on the same musical.
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Each year ahead of the Tony Awards, we profile essential theater professionals who aren't centerstage. This year, with theaters closed due to COVID-19, we check back in to see how they are coping.
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It's hard to predict exactly how theater will come back after the pandemic, but here are a couple guesses: Fewer crowds, more collective imagination, and a focus on racial and environmental justice.
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The magazine given out at theaters isn't just a program, it's a cherished souvenir. The publication has doubled down on its digital offerings, and to almost everyone's surprise, it's doing quite well.
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Even before the age of social-distancing, composer and conductor Eric Whitacre had been leading an online chorus for a decade. Choir members say the connection they foster is more important than ever.
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The Broadway actor was nominated for a Tony Award for his performance in Bullets Over Broadway. Cordero had been working on a production of Rock of Ages when he developed symptoms of pneumonia.
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The Broadway League, which represents theater producers and owners, has announced that none of Broadway's 41 theaters will reopen before the end of 2020.
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Theaters closed due to the coronavirus pandemic are struggling to get work to the public. Some are doing plays for podcast, others are turning what would have been stage works into audio drama.
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Broadway has been hit particularly hard by COVID-19. Theaters are shuttered indefinitely, millions of dollars have been lost, and some members of the community have been infected by the coronavirus.